An Overview of Ivideon Software for the PC
Some people believe that video surveillance systems are too complicated for the user. Today we will show that this is not the case with Ivideon applications. We’ll tell you about our software capabilities, interface, and infrastructure.
Why One Does Not Simply Start Using Video Surveillance
One of the main problems confronting the users of most video surveillance systems is the clutter and confusion of the interface. This is what gave rise to the view that such systems are complex and beyond the reach of the average user. We at Ivideon are fighting this myth.
Our system enables you to set up cloud-based video surveillance in a few minutes, using only a computer with a webcam. We tried to make the interface as user-friendly as possible so that anyone can understand it without special instructions or help from anyone. But if difficulties do come up anyway, technical support is available around the clock.
Another problem is the segmentation of the market for video surveillance systems. Today there is no single solution that is suitable for both business and home. For example, popular solutions for home video surveillance that are available from Chinese companies are not suitable for business users. Even such a simple function as grouping cameras of a single site together is still not actually standard in many applications.
Our team has always sought to create a universal multi-purpose tool that brings best practices together along with some fresh approaches that our competitors have not thought of. One example is a full-fledged camera layout editor that enables a user to build optional grid cells (and to resize them) with video channels. Similar solutions mostly just provide a set of pre-installed templates that are often not adjustable.
Ivideon Client: the Face of the System on Your Desktop
The Ivideon Client application (as well as the web application) is used to view videos online, or from the archive of video recordings from cameras registered with Ivideon Server (we’ll say more about that later), or from cameras with the Ivideon service built-in.
Cameras with Ivideon firmware built-in have one advantage — they only need an Internet connection to work with our service. All other cameras need a computer with Ivideon Server.
Tool Layouts and Menus
The first thing a user sees when starting the application (and after signing in to an account) is a screen divided into several cells. These cells display the video streams from the cameras.
The cells can be dragged and scaled in any way (in a grid: from 1×1 to 6×6).
Of course, there are pre-installed templates. You can display video streams from up to 36 cameras in one window. All user-generated cell layouts and other settings are stored in our cloud, so they will not need to be remade every time you start the application from a different computer or smartphone.
On the left side of the screen is a column of basic functions. They’re divided into subsections: camera list, layouts, groups, and other tools. At the same time, in Ivideon Client you can quickly search for cameras by name, MAC or IP address, or allocate them to groups, which is convenient for monitoring several locations.
The system lets you configure access rights to individual cameras or groups of them. For example, you can let managers watch a broadcast, while letting your security team also use PTZ functions.
Viewing Archived Recordings
All recordings from the cameras can be stored both in the cloud (by subscription) and locally. In the first case, the recordings are on our servers. The duration of storage depends on the chosen pricing plan. In the second case, the video is recorded in a chosen folder on the PC or on the camera’s SD card.
You can view recordings from the archive at any time in the player window. It displays a timeline similar to those used by most video players. Segments highlighted in grey represent saved videos. To start playback, just click on the desired segment. On the same menu, you can export video recordings to a computer.
You can view several recordings from the archive simultaneously in one window. If a camera was not operating during a specified time period, then the message “No recordings” will appear on the screen.
We pay special attention to performance and playback quality. For this reason, a user does not need to have powerful hardware to use Ivideon. This year we completely reworked the video-playback subsystem on Ivideon Client: This solution improves the quality of broadcasts and avoids lags.
Ivideon Server
While the Ivideon Client is the “facade” of the video surveillance system, the Ivideon Server handles the “technical part”:
It stores the video archive in the cloud or locally, or does a combination of both.
· It handles video-recording settings: continuous, on a schedule, or by activation. (Various sensors are used to register sound or motion.)
· It creates new camera settings, and also copies and restores them.
· It manages picture quality and traffic volumes.
Using Ivideon Server, you can build a complete video surveillance system from IP cameras (with a resolution of 640×480 and a frame rate of 25 frames/second), webcams, laptop cameras, etc. Naturally, the server also works with devices with built-in Ivideon service from our store.
The only cameras that cannot be connected are smartphone cameras. But for those, there is a third-party solution called IPWebcam that turns a phone into network camera linked with Ivideon.
Ivideon Server is free of charge for all users. A computer with a 1.6 GHz dual-core processor and SSE 2 instruction set, and 512 megabytes of RAM, is enough to run it. This is possible thanks in part to support for GPU for video recoding, which significantly reduces the load on the server.
Software Motion Sensors
A wide range of devices are supported because the motion sensors are software-based. Cameras begin to record a few seconds before being activated by an event, due to built-in image buffering.
In the settings you can set the sensitivity of the detector, and specify a dead zone in which movements will be ignored (highlighted in red in the screenshot above). The yellow areas are registered movement. At high sensitivity, the camera will respond to vibrations in curtains. At minimum sensitivity it will respond only if a person crosses the room.
One other sensor that operates at the software level is a sound detector. Of course, it only works if the camera has a microphone. In the settings you can set this detector’s sensitivity and set a schedule. You can select days and hours for continuous recording, initiate recording only when a detector is activated, or completely disable the sensor. Duration of recording when the sensor is triggered can be 15, 30, or 60 minutes.
The program can adjust the volume of outgoing traffic and image quality for webcams, and keep an optimal balance for a user.
Ivideon Server supports the ONVIF protocol. As a result, users have the opportunity to activate any ONVIF events, including video-analysis actions.
Ivideon Server automatically finds and activates most ONVIF-compatible cameras and gets more information from them relating to motion detection and substreams. This significantly reduces the load on the server’s processor and enables you to connect more cameras.
We also added support for Linux Ubuntu 18.04 and higher, and added the ability to restore video-server configurations from command prompt sans GUI.
How Data Is Stored
As we said earlier, Ivideon Server is responsible for storing archived video recordings in the cloud. Our cloud is made up of 15 data centers.
All user data is encrypted and stored in “disassembled form” — in other words, it’s broken down into blocks and distributed among different servers. The decryption keys are also stored separately. Employees who have access to servers with the keys do not have access to servers with the data.
Data is transmitted through TLS channels, which protects it from being seen at intermediate nodes. Organizational and technical methods are employed to shield video data from company employees.
In addition, Ivideon Server enables storage of data in Edge Storage mode. This mode is available for Nobelic, Dahua, and Hikvision cameras. It lets you work with a local archive on a video surveillance device connected to Ivideon Server. So you can install Ivideon Server on an inexpensive device without a hard drive.
You can also create several independent local video archives, including ones on different disks, all with their own settings. This distributes the load more efficiently when recording and reading data on a system with a large number of cameras and multiple storage disks.
In developing Ivideon’s solutions, we’ve tried to make the user experience as understandable and convenient as possible, so that a user can always quickly complete the task at hand, whether it’s to obtain a desired video segment or to access a video broadcast from a camera. At the same time, we wanted to make our application multifunctional and ready for use both at home and at industrial enterprises, combining the best functional solutions in the industry and improving on them.
So here we’ve introduced Ivideon Server and Ivideon Desktop Client. In addition to these, we also have mobile applications for iOS and Android. We’ll give you a tour of them in our next article.
